Boosting Health Insurance Awareness

According to a survey by Forbes, approximately 514 billion people will be covered under health insurance schemes in 2021. This merely covers only 37% of the people of India. This translates to the millions of people potentially facing financial catastrophe in the event of a medical emergency. What could be the answer? Boosting health insurance awareness among people. 

In this article, you will get to know about the importance of health insurance literacy, and how this knowledge can empower each one of us. 

Why Does Health Insurance Awareness Matter?

Recently, the medical industry has faced massive inflation, and related expenses are increasing by the minute. Health insurance acts as a shield against the financial burden of medical emergencies. If you do not have health insurance, it can lead to paying a hefty amount of bills. Here is how awareness can make a difference:

1. Financial Security

   Awareness of health insurance empowers us to understand how to save ourselves in any emergency. In the face of a medical situation, a plan can prevent financial hardship.

2. Decision-making Power

   When you know about the different health insurances and their coverage benefits, your decision-making power will increase. By this, you can make sure that you get the deserved and best-quality medical care without financial worries. 

3. Easy in Getting Treatment

   When you have the right health insurance plan, you will have access to the insurance companies' huge list of network hospitals and healthcare centres. So, in case of an emergency, you know where to go for the best treatment facilities.

4. Stress-free Life

   Having health insurance can give you a stress-free life. And you will only buy something when you know about the product. Awareness gives you the knowledge to make the right choice when it comes to buying the best health insurance.

    

Steps to Spread Awareness about Health Insurance

There are many steps that you can take to spread awareness among the public regarding health insurance. Some of them are given below:

1. Educational campaigns

   You can run educational campaigns among society, children, and elders to make them aware of the importance of health insurance. You can visit healthcare organisations, and tell them how the patients and their families can secure themselves from the burden of expensive medical bills during the treatments.

2. Workplace initiative

   If you are the owner of a company, then you can run workshops or campaigns to educate employees about the importance of health insurance. You can also buy them a suitable group health insurance plan under which, you can cover them and their families.

    

3. Using digital resources

   Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and even several apps are the best sources for spreading awareness. The reason is that 90% of people use these platforms as a source of entertainment. Integrating awareness in the form of entertainment is the best idea.

Major Limitations

According to the UN's World Population dashboard, the population of India is over 1.428 billion. Obviously, it is not very easy to convince this number of people to buy health insurance within a short time. There are some limitations and challenges that come up when you take up this task, which are:

1. Illiteracy

   The literacy rate in India is approximately 70%. Thus, 30% population is still illiterate. When you go to talk to these people, you might need to make some extra effort to generate awareness among them.

   Pro tip: Instead of using technical terms to define health insurance, you can make these people understand the importance of it by giving real-time examples in simple language. 

2. Knowledge Gap

   Many illiterate people also lack a basic understanding of the health insurance concept. The concept terminology and policy jargon confuse them, and make it difficult for them to understand the benefits and choose the right plan. 

3. Misconception about Health Insurance

   There are several misconceptions about health insurance such as unnecessary expense, claim rejection, and much more. Awareness about health insurance helps to clear this misconception among people and help them make the right decision. 

4. Socio-economic Factors

   The United Nations report says that approx 364 million people in India fall below the poverty line. This is nearly 28% of the total population. Thus, the biggest challenge is making them understand the importance of health insurance, as they will argue about the fulfilment of the basic necessities like living costs, unemployment, lack of daily meals, etc. 

5. Accessibility Issues

   In rural areas, there are lack of proper hospitals and doctors. This creates a gap in awareness for a significant portion of the Indian population. 

6. Free Coverage 

   Many employee-centric companies offer free health insurance plans to fulfil the medical needs of their employees. People thus are dependent on this coverage and refrain from buying a separate comprehensive plan that offers more flexibility, features and personalised coverage. 

Many Problems One Solution

Despite many challenges, boosting health insurance awareness is important to make sure that every person in the nation has health insurance. The government of India is taking many steps to spread awareness about health insurance. Additionally, what we need is comprehensive involvement from various sectors like schools & colleges, insurance companies, third-party insurance aggregators like PolicyX, healthcare centres like hospitals, etc. to spread this vital knowledge among the masses. 

As an individual, you can also share this article with your friends and family to spread awareness. For more details about health insurance, you can also visit PolicyX.com. 

Health Insurer Network Hospitals